CALEA Under Surveillance

Federal law enforcement remains keen on using CALEA to speed the implementation of advanced wiretapping capabilities via wireless carriers' networks. But although carriers must be CALEA-compliant by June 30, the details of the implementation specifications have yet to be ironed out.

Passed in 1994, CALEA will require carriers to spend billions to add Department of Justice-specified wiretapping capabilities thatallow the FBI to track the location of any user. Unlike E-911 location mandates, however, users wouldn't be able to turn off the location-tracking function from their handsets. That has prompted CALEA's most vocal critics to circle their wagons against what they say is a harbinger of George Orwell's "Big Brother" scenario of citizens under constant surveillance.

For its part, CTIA and the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) last month filed a petition in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to stop CALEA in its present form.

"The courts must rule on exactly what level of surveillance should be implemented," said Tom Wheeler, CTIA president & CEO.

Jim Dempsey, CDT counsel, takes a more ominous view of CALEA. "These changes could upset the balance struck in current wiretapping laws with the Constitution's guarantees to privacy," he said.

The court could consolidate the CTIA/CDT petition with CALEA challenges already filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the U.S. Telecom Association.

"The law-enforcement folks paint (CALEA) as simply giving them the abilities that they already had before the digital world," said Sharie Steele, EFF counsel. "The problem is that that's just not really true."

For example, CALEA requires that carriers be able to provide the full content of a call initiated by someone under surveillance and capture credit-card information with a watered-down version of warrant called a "pen-register order." CALEA also would allow the FBI to continue to listen in on a conference call initiated by a suspect even after that person hangs up. The FBI also wants carriers to provide security-cleared personnel to conduct the physical wiretapping.

By September 2001, carriers must be able to provide information such as content, dialed number, the identity of the called party, digits dialed after connecting with another carrier's network if the user is roaming, timing, and the content and logistics of any network message sent to the user from the carrier. Failure to comply can mean fines of up to $10,000 per day.

Despite the petitions, vendors are unveiling CALEA solutions. ADC NewNet, for example, says its CALEA server can accommodate all J-Standard messages with a platform that's flexible enough to meet any changes in CALEA specifications.

Dr. Keith Bhatia, ADC senior vice president of sales & marketing and the person who headed development of the CALEA solution, said the company already is providing solutions for a number of top-tier carriers, including the world's largest.